After lunch, Fang Bai took a pedicab to Yaming Electronics Recycling Company.
This is a large company specializing in recycling and processing electronic products.
The electronic warehouse occupied twenty to thirty mu, and many bosses were already on-site, sifting through goods.
Fang Bai's target was imported television e-waste. What entered his vision were mountains of old, broken televisions, though many were still in good condition.
The treasure hunters mainly collected useful TV components or repairable televisions, then pieced them together, refurbished them, and sold them.
Fang Bai wanted to do just that.
Generally, people in China didn't understand why foreigners didn't want these things, and Fang Bai himself found it hard to understand before.
Did broken televisions have no value at all?
Upon deeper thought, it became easier to understand. Unlike mechanical equipment, which could still fetch a good price even as scrap metal, televisions were different.
Their inexpensive plastic casings and glass accounted for a large portion of their weight, while the valuable parts were the wires and deflection coils, which contained copper wire about ten times more expensive than iron.
The amount of copper wire in a single television was not much, and disassembling it was troublesome.
In a modern solid waste recycling plant, wires and deflection coils would be directly recycled, while the remaining glass, casings, and other components would be crushed into granules, then sorted and sold through specialized separation and screening methods.
Fluorescent powder, electron guns, and circuit boards would undergo further refinement to extract metals like rare earths, copper, gold, and silver.
However, the processing methods at solid waste recycling plants in this era were relatively crude. Due to a lack of professional repair and testing personnel and low technical levels, it was unlikely to have the professional screening seen in later generations.
Generally, they were directly crushed and refined without sorting, and only TV components in relatively good condition were picked out for those refurbishment customers to choose from.
If it wasn't a solid waste recycling plant, but a typical second-hand TV dealer, their main interest was the copper in the deflection coils, wires, and transformers inside the TV. Other components had little recycling value, or the recycling cost was too high.
Developed countries had high labor costs, and typical households wouldn't bother disassembling these coils and wires, which were worthless to them. Useless or outdated televisions were simply thrown away as trash.
People from China saw this market, and some specialized in collecting this electronic waste. As long as they paid for shipping to China, it was a no-cost business.
Therefore, undismantled televisions and circuit boards were sold by the ton.
Currently, televisions were best-selling items with long lifespans. Most families, after buying one, wouldn't upgrade for several years, treating it like a family heirloom.
New 14-inch black and white televisions from domestic brands like Panda, Feiyue, and Konka sold for two to three hundred yuan, while imported brands like Toshiba, Sony, and Panasonic were double the price.
A few years ago, domestic 14-inch black and white televisions still sold for three to four hundred yuan, but their price dropped relatively quickly.
As for new color televisions, an imported 29-inch Sony sold for over ten thousand yuan, and a 21-inch one cost four to five thousand yuan.
CRT color televisions were the mainstream type of color television at the time, employing cathode ray tube technology with a concave glass screen.
At this time, domestic color televisions were extremely rare, with poor picture quality and small sizes. Even so, the market was still in short supply.
Families in this era had no mortgage or car loans, and fewer types of goods to buy. A large portion of a family's income was used to improve their lives, so they would readily buy a TV for several thousand yuan or a motorcycle for over ten thousand.
People in later generations might wonder why a household with ten thousand yuan would spend several thousand on a color TV. Wouldn't it be better for starting a business or buying a house?
If one didn't know future housing prices, didn't know that electronics would be worthless in the future, didn't know that currency would depreciate so quickly, didn't know… then it's easy to understand.
With money saved and nowhere to spend it, what else could they do?
Right?
In later generations, goods were abundant: spicy crayfish delicacies, spending a few hundred yuan to get a "princess" at KTV, cars, houses, endless online shopping, and the unavoidable bride price—there were so many places to spend money.
Just like now, if Fang Bai wanted to enjoy himself, even finding a ride was troublesome. Transportation was inconvenient, and there was no internet. The best entertainment was staying home and watching TV.
Every evening, villagers would visit other homes with flashlights to watch TV; this was a common phenomenon in rural areas.
Therefore, watching television was an indispensable part of people's lives and the main medium for obtaining external information.
Fang Bai collected his thoughts and walked into the television sorting area. Like other customers, he could freely browse. Some bosses brought people to move the selected televisions to an empty area, where they would finally be weighed and paid for.
Black and white televisions in better condition, regardless of specifications or brand, cost 700-900 yuan per ton. A 14-inch black and white television weighed 10-12 kilograms, so one thousand yuan could buy about a hundred units.
Color televisions were more expensive, with those in better condition costing 2500 yuan per ton. The main sizes were 21 inches, with a small number of 14-inch and 29-inch units. Larger sizes were extremely rare; currently, the largest on the market was 34 inches.
These good-condition TVs were too expensive for most bosses doing refurbishments, and they also required a lot of time to detect problems, demanding too high a technical skill. So, they generally wouldn't choose these.
Televisions in poorer condition were much cheaper, and there were also complete components disassembled from them, which were the targets of the treasure hunters.
If people from later generations saw these second-hand televisions, they would absolutely not believe it: "Aren't these TVs just fixable?"
Why didn't others find this?
Waiting for Fang Bai to get rich?
Are there so many fools who would just watch gold and not pick it up?
It's not that easy!
First, there's the information gap. Few people would likely know about foreign e-waste.
Let alone this era, if not through mobile phones and media, how many people would know about electronic e-waste? Or know that such a thing exists in T City?
Even if you knew, they sell by the ton, so you need capital to acquire them; they don't sell in small quantities.
In this era, how much savings could a private individual have?
Second, it seems simple, but in reality, repairs are very difficult; you have to find where the fault is.
Of course, good second-hand televisions were picked up by Yaming Company or sold at high prices to those refurbishment companies.
The ones on-site were, of course, difficult to repair, which is why Fang Bai could find a bargain.
This was not something a simple electrician would know how to do.
If it were an electrician from later generations, with more experience, he might be able to fix it.
In this era, capable people were all in state-owned units. Few thought about electronic e-waste, and there weren't many technical personnel.
So, it can be said that this era was full of opportunities to get rich, relatively easy to seize.
Additionally, if a television was specifically for use in Island Country, the voltage was 110V, and a conversion transformer would be needed. If it was for export, it was generally 220V, which could be used directly in China.
Fang Bai's hand touched a 21-inch Toshiba color television produced in 1988. He found that the picture tube, screen, and other parts were good. The damaged parts included: two bulging capacitors on the circuit board, a broken speaker, and a break in the degaussing coil.
If one knew what was broken, repairing it was not difficult.
Fang Bai only needed to hire personnel who understood a little about circuits, mark the problematic parts for repair, and it wouldn't take much time to fix them, then refurbish the TV.
If an imported color TV originally sold for around four thousand yuan, would no one want it if it was sold for one thousand, or even a few hundred yuan?
As for the cost?
It weighed about 20 kilograms, with an acquisition price of about fifty yuan.
Including transportation fees, labor repair costs, purchasing new components, and refurbishment costs, plus sales costs and other expenses, the total cost would probably be around one hundred yuan.
Several times the profit!
Holy cow, what a huge profit!
Of course, the items are right here; you need the technical skill to do this line of work.
If you have the ability, it's like picking up money. In this era, there are so many opportunities to get rich.
However, most people don't have this ability or know this information.
So, it's not an exaggeration to call it a monopoly business.
"It really is gold everywhere, it just depends if you have the ability to pick it up," Fang Bai thought, filled with pleasant surprises. Finding a television that was easy to repair was too easy.
What others couldn't do, he could easily do!
He had read many fantasy novels where everyone found a treasure map, but the most important treasures were all picked up by the protagonist.
Now, Fang Bai was like the protagonist in a novel. This kind of television e-waste dump seemed to be a treasure map specifically set up for Fang Bai!
He wasn't afraid of others taking too much, and these treasures were continuously sent from abroad to China.
The domestic television market was too big; supply couldn't meet demand!
This was so freaking awesome!
This kind of pleasure was different from the pleasure of earning a lot of money.
It was easy, free, and without intense competition.
This was a kind of enjoyment!